Casualty
by Three Cheers For Treason
Summary: Because out of all of the times Ed fights Scar and all of the times you see buildings get destroyed, a civilian is bound to be killed.


Plot Bunny from HELL.

It's not that good, I know, but it pounced on me.

Letter written in English from a prompt about death

Fullmetal Alchemist and all respective characters belong to Hiromu Arkawa

Feel free to Rate or Review. Or both. I don't know

Enjoy

* * *

It was an _accident._

Sincerely, honestly, it was. He had never meant to hurt anybody, he never meant for any of this to happen to anyone. If he had known, he would have stopped it. He would have been there to push her out of the way, and she would have been fine.

The truth was that the paramedics said that it could have been anyone who did it. The building had been damaged somewhere in the chaos of the battle, so there was no saying who had transmuted it into its mutilated, unstable form. Fighting Scar was a difficult task when it came to it just in general, Ed was never paying attention to the buildings he was demolishing or the people who were walking by. He was thinking about Winry's parents and the blood running down his face and how to dodge Scars arm and the impending doom that came with it. So, it really _could _have been anyone. It might have been Scar, or Al. Hell, it might've even been Armstrong.

So why was he the only one hanging around the hospital with the hopeless feeling of guilt and dread filling his throat? Why did the burning feeling in his stomach stay for longer than a wave of concern?

'Beast of Burden,' Ed thought numbly to himself.

He hated the hospital anyway. Because no good news ever came from it, and the anti septic made his nose burn like crazy, and when he realized that he could no longer differentiate it from any other normal atmospheric air, that's when he knew he had been there too long.

So why wasn't he leaving?

He knew.

Because, somehow, in Edward Elric's mind, this was entirely his fault.

She wasn't in the caution tape, the paramedic had droned dully, flipping her charts. The building looked fine from the other side; bet you couldn't even see the other smashed up bit of it from where she was walking. But it was the untouched side that collapsed- girlie was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Crushed in the rubble, she was. Punctured lung, broken Pelvis, four broken ribs and her left leg fractured in three different places, and that's not even the worst of it- hope this girl never played cards, 'cause she's got the worst luck I've seen in a while. Surprised the bricks didn't kill her then and there, t'aint often we got a body like this.

A body, Ed thought. Just a body now.

And it's all my fault.

And suddenly Edward Elric became painfully aware of the girl sitting sobbing next to him. Turning slightly, he glanced over at her awkwardly. She couldn't have been more than 10 years old, with the frayed edges of her hair tickling her shoulders and wearing jeans that had seen better days- or years. Sobbing into her hands and snot running down her face, the doctors and nurses brushed past her, paying no attention, running to rooms and wheeling gurneys and she was still crying.

The Surgeon appeared out of nowhere.

"…Margaret? Margaret Amcotts?"

The girl snapped up to the doctor, eyes bright and desperate, red and puffy.

"That's me!" She said, almost as if she was afraid the doctor would leave. "That's me, I'm Margaret, my sister, she's somewhere here, please, is she OK, please tell me-"

"For…" He flipped the papers on the clipboard. "Samantha Amcotts?" The girl choked.

"YES, Sammy, she's here, she's hurt, you have to help her- the building fell, please, she's the only family I have left, they said- they said-"

Ed froze.

No.

No.

This wasn't happening. Too coincidental. This couldn't be-

"Ah, yes, the building from the military zone...Margaret, your name is?"

The little girl nodded insanely.

"Samantha…she's in critical condition," the doctor said with apologetic eyes. "She's very hurt, Margaret, not on the outside, but on the inside…we're not sure…" He trailed off.

Margaret's face was still frozen in a look of anticipation.

Ed looked away.

The doctor's footsteps faded out of his earshot, and Ed turned slowly back to the girl on the waiting seat chair.

Her arms hung limply by her sides, palms facing up, head hung towards her lap, eyes dead like still water, disbelief written all over her face. She started to mumble something, and it took Ed a couple of moments to figure out what she was whispering. When he did hear, it made his mouth go dry and his gut drop.

"Sammy…Sammy…it should have been me…it should have been me…Sammy…it should have been me, Sammy…"

Ed got up and left the hospital and the girl who sat like a statue on the plastic waiting chair.

* * *

He heard it when he was walking through HQ.

The truth was, that later on, he wasn't able to tell if it would have been a wonderful thing or a horrible thing that he had overheard the secretaries talking. He didn't think much about it.

But he _had _heard them, for whatever reason he had been meant to, (however the Fullmetal Alchemist did not believe in Destiny) and he had stopped dead in his tracks when he heard the surname.

"Amcotts…"

His chest tightened like it had been frozen.

"The girl who was caught in the rubble...I saw it, in the newspaper! She died last night in her sleep, so sad…just eighteen, too…tragic, really…"

He didn't get to hear the last parts of the conversation. He had already started to run the opposite way down the hall.

* * *

She was the only figure in the graveyard.

Even though she was small, Ed could still tell. The split ends that reached her collarbone, and the black dress that swayed in the wind.

Struggling to catch his breath, his chest felt like it was on fire, but not from the running. It was foggy out, crap weather really, and he was heaving in big gulps of air while he stared at the freshly dug grave.

Eighteen.

The girl, Margaret, showed no sign of moving, or crying, or anything. Ed's stomach twisted, because he knew what that feeling was like, because he remembered, what it was like to, or to think that, you had lost everything and everyone close to you.

Even her tiny back suggested with its grey wilt: this girl did not possess the will to live.

He didn't know what to say, he realized nervously. All that time running here- he had nothing. It didn't matter though.

The girl spoke first.

"My sister woke up before she died in the hospital bed. The doctor told her what had happened- how the building fell in an alchemist's fight with an Ishballan convict. I learned later…" her voice did not waver in the slightest, a detail that seemed to strike a frightening cord in Ed.

"I do not forgive you. I will never forgive you. But…" She turned to him. Eyes cold as stone, face pale, but at the same time, tears running down her cheeks. Ed stood taller than her. He looked down at her incredulously and at a loss for words.

"She forgave you." The girl Margaret held out something, and Ed looked down at her hands.

An envelope.

He reached out, and gripped the edges of the paper. She let go, stood there for a few moments, and then, without saying another word to the person who had killed her sister, walked away down the row of graves in the tall grass of the fog.

Ed did not move.

After a few moments, he sat down very slowly.

And with precocious hands,

Opened the letter.

.

.

.

_Dear Edward Elric._

_You do not know me, but I know you. I have known you for exactly 5 hours, 39 minutes, and 18 seconds. The doctors say I will be lucky if I live to know you through the night. _

_My name is Samantha Amcotts. I was born on October 26th in a thunderstorm. I have a sister named Margaret. My favorite color is green. My parents died when I was 12. The sport I am best at is swimming. I had a crush n a boy named Peter Hallings when I was in 7__th__ grade. I have never learned to ride a bike. I will be 18 years old when I die. _

_I'm writing you this letter because it is the last thing I will ever do. I need to write it down for myself too. Because what is death, anyway? If I had ever met you, I would ask you. They say you're famous. That's pretty neat. I wish you could answer my questions. I wish I had met you before I do die. But death is part of the circle of life, right? Life only flows in one direction and all that stuff. Isn't that what you alchemists say? When you die, your body decomposes and other things live. I don't know. I mean, I've never thought about death that much, because I know there's a lot of bologna about it out there in the world, and that's a deep dark ravine I don't want to peer in to. All I know is that,_

_I am not afraid. _

_There's an old dumb saying, 'Everything happens for a reason.' Always seemed silly to me- I think a better phrase to put it is, 'Everything happens.' Because, sometimes, there are some accidents that you can't prevent. And sometimes, there are some people who you just can't save. Sometimes that person is yourself. And sometimes that person is an 18-year-old girl who just wanted to go grocery shopping, but ended up in the hospital._

_I've never been so scared as I am now_

_But _

_My dad used to say, "Death is only the next adventure."_

_So._

_Writing to you from the next adventure,_

_Mr. Edward Elric, Fullmetal Alchemist,_

_Samantha Amcotts_


End file.
